Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry by Stacy Malkan

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New Book Delves into the Dark Side of Big Beauty

Lead in lipstick. 1,4 dioxane in baby shampoo. Coal tar in shampoo. How is this possible? Simple. The $35 billion cosmetics industry is so powerful they’ve kept themselves unregulated for decades. Stacy Malkan’s new book, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry (New Society Publishers, Oct. 2007), chronicles the quest that led a group of health and environmental activists to the world’s largest cosmetics companies to ask some tough questions:

Why do companies market themselves as pink ribbon leaders in the fight against breast cancer, yet use hormone-disrupting and carcinogenic chemicals that may contribute to that very disease?

Why do companies put chemicals linked to reproductive harm into products used daily by men and women of childbearing age?As doors slammed in their faces and the beauty myth peeled away, the industry’s toxic secrets began to emerge. The good news is that while the multinational corporations fight for their right to use hazardous chemicals, scientists and entrepreneurs are developing safer non-toxic technologies and building businesses on the values of health, justice and personal empowerment.

About the Author
Stacy Malkan is communications director of Health Care Without Harm and a media strategist of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a national coalition working to eliminate hazardous chemicals from personal care products. Her book offers an insider’s view of the five-year campaign by environmental and health groups to pressure the US cosmetics industry to use safer ingredients.

For the latest news about toxic chemicals in cosmetics: www.SafeCosmetics.org.